News

The overall aim of the project “RespiraTox” is to develop a QSAR model and user-friendly tool that reliably predicts human respiratory irritancy of single compounds and mixtures. Dr. Sylvia Escher and her team from Fraunhofer ITEM are contributing a profound knowledge in toxicological data, while Dr. Andreas Karwath and his team from the University of Birmingham are responsible for the modeling and machine learning part.

Present challenges and innovative approaches in state-of-the-art infection research in Lower Saxony were the main interests of Germany’s federal minister of research, Anja Karliczek, and Lower Saxony’s minister of science and culture, Björn Thümler, when they visited the CRC Hannover on May 31, 2018.

Martin Hoffmann of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM in Regensburg, Germany, and Jörg Galle of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics (IZBI) in Leipzig, published an article in Nature Systems Biology and Applications: "Recognizing hidden mechanisms of cell Regulation"

Having participated in the official taster day already during the past years, Fraunhofer ITEM this year again received 23 “tasters” who took the opportunity to get insights into the working environment at Fraunhofer ITEM.

In the publicly funded project TransPlaMed (NBank), the Institute for Microtechnology (IMT) of Technische Universität Braunschweig, the Lower Saxony Center for Biomedical Engineering, Implant Research and Development (NIFE), the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Göttingen (HAWK), the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM are collaborating to develop a translational manufacturing platform for innovative medical devices.

The new Medical Device Regulation (MDR) that became effective in summer 2017 poses a challenge in particular for small and medium-sized biomedical engineering enterprises, since it requires conformity evaluation not only of future innovations, but also reassessment of existing products. Initiated by the High Performance Center Translational Biomedical Engineering, representatives from industry and academia discussed the issue of medical device safety during the meeting of the expert panel on functional interfaces of the VDE/VDI Society Microelectronics, Microsystems and Precision Engineering in Frankfurt (Germany) on January 22, 2018.

In a clinical trial performed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM, administration of a combination drug from Novartis (incacaterol/glycopyrronium) was shown to improve not only lung function in COPD patients, but to have a significantly positive effect on their heart function as well. The results of this study have now been published in the renowned journal “The Lancet Respiratory Medicine”.

CRACK IT Challenge competition 2017
/ 2018

Two Fraunhofer ITEM scientists have been awarded funding for their projects in the 2017 CRACK IT Challenge competition. The CRACK IT Challenge is the NC3Rs’ response to the changing environment in the biosciences. The NC3Rs is a UK-based scientific organization dedicated to replacing, refining and reducing the use of animals in research and testing.